fallout from a restless mind

#idealog: lest we forget

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects witch actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

I have seen and endured the suffering of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practised on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realise.

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The Grave by Don McLeanimage: detail from Otto Dix’s War Triptych (1929-32)

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this is ...

a place designed to house thought excesses. if my mind is archimedes' bath, the water my general thoughts and archimedes himself the kind of clever thoughts i'm supposed to put in my work, then what you will find here is what escapes over the brim as the skinny boffin lowers himself into the tub. it exists, further indulging the analogy, on the basis that it might be necessary to collect and measure the runoff in order to know the volume of the person.